January 1st, 1861.
The Christmas holidays have passed quickly away, and the year of grace eighteen hundred and sixty-one was born amid great rejoicings. We have just "rung out the Old and in the New." As the clock showed the midnight hour, the bell was tolled, our swivel gun sent a blaze of fire from its little throat into the darkness, and some fire-works went fizzing and banging into the clear sky. The rockets and blue-lights gleamed over the snow with a weird and strange light; and the loud boom of the gun and the crash of the bell echoing and reëchoing through the neighboring gorges seemed like the voices of startled spirits of the solitude.
LOOKING FOR SONNTAG.
I now look anxiously for the return of Sonntag and Hans. Indeed, I have been prepared to see them at any time within these past seven days; for although I had little expectation that they would find Esquimaux at Sorfalik or Peteravik, yet their speedy return would not have surprised me. This is the tenth day of their absence, and they have had more than ample time to go even to the south side of Whale Sound and come back again. I am the more anxious now that the moon has set, and the difficulties of traveling are so greatly multiplied. However, Sonntag had an undisguised wish to remain some time among the natives, to study their language and habits, and to join them in their hunting excursions; and when he left I felt quite sure that, if a reasonable pretext could be found for absenting himself so long, we would not see him until the January moon. There is no doubt that he will remain if he finds no interest of the expedition likely to suffer in consequence.
January 5th.
I have no longer a dog. The General was the last of them, and he died two days ago. Poor fellow! I had become more than ever attached to him lately, especially since he had quite recovered from the accident to his leg, and seemed likely to be useful with the sledge after a while. It seems strange to see the place so deserted and so quiet. In the early winter I never went out of the vessel on the ice without having the whole pack crowding around me, playing and crying in gladness at my coming; now their lifeless carcasses are strewn about the harbor, half buried in snow and ice, and, if not so fearful, they are at least hardly more sightly than were those other stiff and stark and twisted figures which the wandering poets found beneath the dark sky and "murky vapors" and frozen waters of the icy realm of Dis. There was a companionship in the dogs, which, apart from their usefulness, attached them to everybody, and in this particular we all feel alike the greatness of the loss.
But it is hard to get along without a pet of some kind, and since the General has gone I have got Jensen to catch me a fox, and the cunning little creature now sits coiled up in a tub of snow in one corner of my cabin; and, as she listens to the scratching of my pen, she looks very much as if she would like to know what it is all about. I am trying hard to civilize her, and have had some success. She was very shy when brought in, but, being left to herself for a while, she has become somewhat reconciled to her new abode. She is about three fourths grown, weighs four and a quarter pounds, has a coat of long fine fur, resembling in color that of a Maltese cat, and is being instructed to answer to the name of Birdie.
January 6th.
THE AURORA BOREALIS.
I have often been struck with the singular circumstance that up to this time we have scarcely seen the Aurora Borealis; and until to-day there has been no display of any great brilliancy. We have been twice favored during the past twelve hours. The first was at eleven o'clock in the morning, and the second at nine o'clock in the evening. The arch was perfect in the last case; in the former it was less continuous, but more intense. In both instances, the direction of the centre from the observatory was west by south (true), and was 30° above the horizon. Twenty degrees above the arch in the evening there was another imperfect one, a phenomenon which I have not before witnessed. In the direction west-northwest a single ray shot down to the horizon, and there continued for almost an hour.